How the Spirit of Jezebel (Subtly) Hinders the Church
There are the obvious ways the spirit of Jezebel would attack a church: outright sexual sin, false teaching, false prophecy, and idolatry (Revelation 2:20–23).
But then there are more subtle ways that she begins to sneak her way in, which lead to outright takeover and falling into the above sins.
To help with this, I want to look at 1 John 2:15–17:
“Do not love the world or the things in the world. If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him. For all that is in the world—the lust of the flesh, the lust of the eyes, and the pride of life—is not of the Father but is of the world. And the world is passing away, and the lust of it; but he who does the will of God abides forever.”
I want to help us by pointing out potential ways that we may be harboring the love of the world that could lead to an open door for the spirit of Jezebel to take over.
“If anyone loves the world, the love of the Father is not in him…”
This is quite a statement.
The love of the Father is eternal. It is not only eternal but it is intent on loving people with eternity in mind. The love of the world, on the other hand, is based on the here and now.
Let’s flesh this out a little more. Peace, joy, happiness, unity, celebration, acceptance, family, love, pleasure, comfort, security… all of these are good things, right? I think so! And when I read the Bible, I see this confirmed. However, what we will see is that there is a significant difference between the world’s version of these things and God’s version of these things.
The peace of God is first about having peace with God Himself. In other words, are you a child of God or an enemy of God? This kind of peace is everlasting. Then, the peace of God is something supernatural—something that surpasses understanding. It is a peace from God that guards our hearts and minds as we go through circumstances that are difficult and don’t make sense.
On the other hand, the peace that the world offers is based on the here and now, or based on human ideas and strength vs. faith. I’ll give some examples:
If you are having a conflict with someone else about an important matter, the devil can actually come in and provide an alternative route to real peace… which is temporary peace (what I like to call fake peace). We have probably all experienced this before. It’s like having a room full of people wearing masks. Everyone is at least somewhat aware that there are serious problems, but no one is talking about them because everyone wants to “keep the peace.”
Let me give another example: let’s say you tell someone, “Jesus loves you and died for your sins,” and their response is, “Get away from me.” You could keep the peace and minimize conflict by doing what is asked, or—if prompted by the Holy Spirit—you could press past the discomfort of conflict and persevere in the chance that the person just needs a little more love and truth so that salvation from the devil’s hell can come.
Let me give one more example here regarding unity. There is a lot of talk in Christian circles about unity. Unity is something very important to God and it is mentioned quite a bit in Scripture. In fact, you could write books on the topic of biblical unity.
However, like other things, there is a temporary unity that the enemy wants Christians to value, and an eternal unity that God’s Holy Spirit cultivates. When we as humans take creating unity into our own hands, we make serious compromises. For example, let’s say you had an incredible encounter with God and He spoke to you, and you were set absolutely on fire and are sharing the gospel often and seeing people come to Jesus every month.
But then, you hear a message on unity and feel a need to gather with believers with different beliefs than you. And then you gather with a group of believers from other groups. At this meeting there are some who don’t believe God moves in power today, some that believe the Bible is not fully inspired, some that deny certain tenets of Christianity, and some that are somewhat open to LGBTQ+ in the church.
What is going to happen? You are likely either going to be arguing with everyone continually or will be progressively persuaded that your convictions are not really that important and eventually tone down the fire you once had. In this situation, you may become more pleasing to the people at this group, but you will not become more pleasing to God.
The trap is this: make small decisions toward the love of the world (temporary-based) that pull us away from the love of the Father (eternal-based). Before we know it, we are living for what is temporary altogether. The devil might seem to only be asking for an inch, but he is looking to take EVERYTHING (Galatians 5:9).
It is these seemingly little compromises that I think get us in so much trouble as Christians. We fall for the deception of choosing the temporary version of what is good vs. walking in wisdom and the fear of the Lord and standing for what is eternally good.
It is in the place of minor compromise that Jezebel comes in with her sexual seduction, false teaching, false prophecy, and idolatry. It starts with a little decision but ends with you being the very person that ends up contending against the prophetic voice of God—making yourself an enemy of God Himself.
Be on guard. Keep yourself free from the love of the world. Focus on the love of the Father. Love people with eternally based love. Love people toward heaven. Love people toward heavenly rewards and toward them being a blessing to Jesus.
